Publicans are growing increasingly angry about the plethora of "public information" signs and posters they are required to display to customers, describing them as the visual equivalent of white noise.
Pubs already have to display more than 50 warning about thieves and spiked drinks to promotional posters for proof-of-age schemes – with more on the way once the smoking ban comes into force next Sunday.
There are also plans to make them display details of alcoholic units and "responsible drinking" messages on beer pumps and menus.
Now the Federation of Licensed Victuallers and the British Beer and Pub Association are calling on the Government, police and councils to reduce the number of notices.
FLVA chief executive Tony Payne complained there were already too many and his members were running out of places to put them all.
The BBPA's Mark Hastings claimed that the proliferation of signage had become "clutter, a kind of graffiti and like "white noise".
But Dr Vivienne Nathanson, of the British Medical Association, insisted signs about safe drinking were not the "nanny state" but the "information state".
The Sunday Telegraph 24/06/07 page 12
